Workers Communist Party of Tunisia

The first of a three-part video (other parts below) features the address of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, former spokesperson for the French Left Party and initiator of the Movement for a Sixth Republic, at the 2014 year's Humanity Fair, which is hosted every year by the daily newspaper L'Humanité, of the French Communist Party.

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Mélenchon discusses how to build a movement against austerity that goes beyond the traditional left, an important issue in a country where the racist National Front is leading in the polls. Also appearing is Hamma Mammami, leader of the Communist Party of Tunisian Workers and the candidate of the Popular Front in 2014's presidential election. At the end there is a short interview with Jérôme Kerviel, a "rogue trader" who cost the Société Générale bank €4.9 billion, but who maintains that his superiors knew about and condoned his activities. Mélenchon and the Parti de Gauche (Left party) have been active in building solidarity with Kerviel.

More than 1 million people mobilised to protest the assassination of Chokri Belaid.

By Patrick Harrison and Dominique Lerouge

February 12, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Furious protests have exploded onto Tunisia's streets and a general
strike has been called after the assassination of left-wing politician
and lawyer Chokri Belaid on February 6. Belaid was head of the far-left Party of Democratic Patriots (PPD, he was previously leader of MOUPAD: see article below).
His killing is Tunisia's first reported political assassination since
independence.

Belaid was gunned down outside his home. Only 12 hours before, he
publicly denounced "attempts to dismantle the state and the creation of
militias to terrorise citizens and drag the country into a spiral of
violence", Al Ahram said on February 6.

January 12, 2012 -- International Viewpoint -- The 22nd congress of Tunisia’s UGTT trade union federation
(Union Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens, General Union of Tunisian
Workers) was held December 25-28, 2011. A large part of it was devoted to
the election of a new national leadership. The new executive bureau (EB) is
clearly better than the old one. It is based on real activists involved
in struggles, who are not corrupt.

An alternative list had been constituted
around those close to the federation’s former deputy leader. It
includes some self-styled independents, of whom some were in reality
close to the Islamists currently in power (about 10% of congress
participants were estimated to be linked to the Islamists).

The overwhelming majority of members of
the new EB belong historically to the trade union left, and this is a
victory for that left. Half of those elected are not, or are no longer,
members of a party. This is for example the case with the new general
secretary. He was part of the minority on the old EB and belongs to the
democratic and left movement. He was a member of the Communist Party 20 years ago.

July 23, 2011 -- AFP -- For the first time in 25 years, the Tunisian Workers' Communist Party was able to hold a congress. Long banned, the party was legalised after the fall of President Ben Ali's authoritarian regime. (If video is blocked by AFP, go to YouTube.)

Fahem Boukadous, member of the Communist Workers Party of Tunisia, interviewed by
Alma Allende, translated from the original Spanish by John Catalinotto

February 7, 2011 -- Tlaxcala -- Fahem Boukadous
is a journalist who was in prison when the people of Tunisia
forced the dictator Ben Ali to flee the country. A member of the
Communist Workers Party (often also referred to as the Workers Communist Party) of Tunisia (PCOT), he does all he can every day so that
the great opportunity opened by the revolution will not be lost.